The Libertarian Party: Still Going Strong at 30

By David F. Nolan

It seems hard to believe that 30 years have passed since a small group of
young idealists, most of us just out of college, met in Colorado Springs to
launch the Libertarian Party.

Our inspirations ranged from Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill to Ayn
Rand and Robert Heinlein. We were passionate in our belief that no individual
should be sacrificed to satisfy some collective "need" or plan; that
all people should be free to pursue their own dreams in their own way, so long
as they do not use force or fraud to harm others.

The ideal of individual liberty is an age-old dream, but one which has been
violated by governments throughout human history, and our hardy group saw that
neither of the two major American parties was true to that vision. Republican
and Democratic politicians give occasional lip service to individual rights
and liberty, but they are only too willing to violate those rights to attain
their goal of the moment.

And it is our unswerving devotion to individual liberty, I believe, that
has given the Libertarian Party its enduring strength. That strength has
enabled it to grow despite the strong institutional bias toward a
"two-party system" -- not mentioned, by the way, in any of our
nation's founding documents.

Currently, there are 240,000 voters registered as Libertarians, and 298
Libertarians hold elective office, more than all other third parties combined.

According to research by Richard Winger, one of the most respected
third-party experts in the country, the Libertarian Party is the most
successful alternative party of the past half-century. Winger found that
Libertarians accounted for the largest number of gubernatorial and Senatorial
candidates obtaining the highest percentages in races from 1948 through 2000
-- more than the Reform Party, the Greens, or George Wallace's American
Independent Party.

Last year, 256 Libertarians ran for the U.S. House -- the first time in 80
years that any third party had contested a majority of Congressional seats.
And they polled a total of 1.7 million votes, the largest number ever received
by any third party slate. In Massachusetts, U.S. Senate candidate Carla Howell
received 12 percent of the vote in a three-way race, coming within a point or
two of beating the Republican!

The Libertarian Party has helped to fundamentally shift the nature of
American political debate -- even though it has yet to elect a member of
Congress [except perhaps for Ron Paul, ed.] or a president. Libertarian ideas
that were considered outlandish 20 years ago -- like replacing the bankrupt
Social Security system with private retirement accounts, getting rid of the
income tax and the IRS, ending the War on Drugs, and so on -- are now part of
mainstream political debate.

And yet the news media have largely overlooked this evidence that the
Libertarian message has a broad and enduring appeal in America. Perhaps it is
because our culture is obsessed with celebrities, and the Libertarian Party
has never had a "celebrity" candidate for president, such as a
George Wallace, Ross Perot, or Ralph Nader.

But whatever the reason, the Libertarian Party isn't going to go away.

Indeed, as other alternative parties struggle or fade, the Libertarian
Party is clearly the only viable national alternative to the Democrats and
Republicans.

In 2002, we will once again be fielding candidates in a majority of
Congressional districts. In most races, these candidates will be the only
choice for voters who are deeply concerned about the ill-conceived and
dangerous Security State measures that have been hastily enacted by Congress.
We are in a time of tremendous change, and I believe that Americans are soon
going to have to choose between a lot more freedom and a lot less freedom.

We are living more and more in a system in which people are no longer
innocent until proven guilty. More and more, we are living in a state where it
is presumed that the government controls everything, and that Americans have
to get the government's permission to do almost anything. Ten years ago, you
didn't even need to show identification to get onto an airplane; today you
have to show some kind of "government- issued" ID to check into many
hotels.

The question is, can we turn that around? I don't know. But I sincerely
believe the Libertarian Party is the last, best hope for freedom in America.

Thirty years ago, when the Libertarian Party was founded, we were moved by
the idea expressed so well in the Rascals song: "All the world over, so
easy to see, people everywhere just want to be free."

They still do.

David F. Nolan founded the Libertarian Party with a group of friends in
Colorado Springs on December 11, 1971. He currently lives in Mission Viejo,
CA.